Lucy by the Sea: A Novel

"Elizabeth Strout’s fourth novel about Lucy Barton finds the recently widowed, hypersensitive, supremely sympathetic writer at sea, awash in confusion as she agrees to flee Manhattan and ride out the pandemic in Maine with her philandering ex, William. Lucy’s plain-spoken, painfully honest narrative reads as if she were baring her heart and soul to a new friend. This chronicle of the first year of the pandemic captures its disruptions, uncertainties, anxieties and changing relationships better than any novel I’ve read on the subject. It also demonstrates once again that Strout’s warmth and understanding of the human condition are capacious."